[haswell]

This isn’t a good analogy imo, and I’d argue that it’s often healthy for someone to push back this way.

I’ve been on both sides of this fence as a customer and a developer, and have at times had to straddle the fence as a PM.

The hardness of a problem does not mean the problem can’t or doesn’t need to be solved.

A client pushing back is often their way of trying to ensure that the developer actually understands what they want.

“Pushing back” as a developer is often mostly about setting expectations, i.e. “no, this is very different, won’t benefit from previous work and won’t be easy”.

All of this is necessary to gain a shared understanding, and the end result may still be that the work must be done.